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Finished reading a few things!

Image result for prismatica vol 7 magazine

Image result for MRS MARTINS INCOMPARABLE ADVENTUREUE

Prismatica Vol 7 and Mrs. Martins Incomparable Adventure!

My favorite story in Prismatica (Quicker Liquor by Mara Johnston) r would have to be the story of the goblin who upon finding a speed potion, decides to help the human he has a crush on and the rest of their friends escape captivity. Basically, imagine a little tiny goblin zooming around like Sonic. That's exactly what happens. It was really cute!

Mrs. Martins Incomparable Adventure, meanwhile, can be described as "lesbian aunt destroys horrible nephews life with help of the girl she wants to date" and it is delightful. The nephew is truly a piece of work and deserves the suffering. There was some good ol fashioned angst in the form of elderly women thinking about their lives and the futures, and I loved that too.

So this was a pretty friggin' dark anthology series. It was a good example of erotic dark horror and when sex and death actually go together without feeling, well, forced.

This is not a movie where you get a shower scene starring a famous actress.

This is a book where necrophiles roam, your zombie brother lusts after you, and you are cursed to love someone in the darkest of ways.

It was a very experimental book at times. Some stories were written as though they were letters. Another as though it was a script. First person view? We got that too.

I think the best story found in this is definitely the titular story "Kissing Carrio"n. Some stories were forgettable, but Kissing Carrion sticks in my mind even after a few months of not reading the book. It was disgusting, dark, and yet, something in it's ending felt like I was witnessing a type of love no one, let alone me, could understand.

"Skin City" had a bit of a predictable ending, but it was very gruesome and had vivid imagery thats probably gonna pop up in one of my nightmares one day.

"Torch Song" had the best prose found in the book. My favorite paragraph in this entire book would have to be this one:

Love, my emotional brain tumor. Love, my habit , my jones. My uncontrollable urge. My will to power. Love, my unscratched itch---my addiction, with all the word entails: ecstasy, mania, withdrawal. My suicide in progress.

It's a shame this book doesn't seem to be available online anymore, because I really think it's a good read albeit a very dark one. Even though I forgot some stories, I still enjoyed reading every single one of them in the moment. Everything had something different to give me and I was totally in for the entire ride.

So I have no idea how to use goodreads still, so I'mma just.....put some books here instead.

AMAZON KINDLE BOOKS TO READ....
Silver in the Woods by Emily Tesh - M/M, fantasy, Novella. Retelling of the Green Man myths.
Gifts of Spring by Shira Glassman - M/F, fantasy. Short story.
Wilder Girls by Rory Power - F/F, I think. Bit of horror. Please finish this book already it's so good

STORYBUNDLE BOOKS TO READ...
Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files - Mixed, horror. Short story anthology. You're only a few chapters away from completing it, so read it already!
Parasite Life by Victoria Dalpe - F/F, Horror.
Underdogs 2: Beware of Wolf by Geonn Canonnon - F/F, mystery, fantasy. Already read book one, so book two is probably decent!
Skin Deep Magic by Craig Laurence Gidney- Mixed? fantasy. Short story anthology with a really gorgeous cover. Seems to be about magical black women.
F is for Fairy edited by Rhonda Parrish - Another fantasy anthology about fairies. Only reason this one isn't finished yet it because you're too lazy to find the last page you were on! Good job, Larissa!

Horizon Zero Dawn

Probably my favorite find of the year. It's a game currently on Playstation Now, and it's an RPG game where you play as an outcast of a tribe in a world where mechanical beasts roam free. Aloy, the outcast, finds a "Focus" that lets her examine the world around her and find weak points on the mechanical beasts. Using the Focus, she tries to find out who her mother is.

I really like hunting in this game! It's far more well thought out than it is in lets say Skyrim, where you had to mod the game to make hunting fun.

Bokuten - Why I Became an Angel

And so, after five years this game has finally been released. I honestly didn't realize it was so dark when I bought it. I knew it was going to be a depressing game, but every single choice leads to something bittersweet.

It's about a depressed, nihilistic protagonist who accidentally shoots down an angel and is roped into helping her return "heart shards"---fractured pieces of a heart after it's been broken. You have the option to choose whether or not to return the shard, and in order to play certain routes you may be forced to not return it.

There is a lot of potentially triggering content in this game, especially in the latter half of the game. Please play with caution and heed the games warnings.

Nekopara 2

Don't judge me. Coconut is cute.

So I subscribed to Locus Magazine because they recently introduced a monthly subscription model for a decent price, and I really like it. It's basically this magazine that discusses recent speculative fiction releases...including short fiction! I think I'll keep this subscription because reading a magazine is honestly way better than dealing with book twitter's constant discourse, lol.

But I found a few things that interested me in the magazine and in case it interests anyone else, here you go! I can't vouch for any of these as this is mostly for my own reference on what to read next.:

Short Fiction

Omenana Magazine - A free online magazine that deals in speculative fiction short stories from Africa and world-wide African descending communities.

Three Gowns for Clara by Auston Habershaw - Cinderella parody told from the POV of a dressmaker. Found in the January/Feburary 2020 release of the Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

Interlude in Arcadia by Corey Flinthoff - A professor tries to break up with a graduate student, who knows far more about mythology then he does. Found in the January/Feburary 2020 release of the Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

Bourbon Penn - A free online magazine that has "odd and imaginative" speculative fiction stories.

Novels

Catfishing on the CatNet by Naomi Kritzer - When one of her friends online decide to hack into her sex ed class robot so that it teaches proper education, the protagonist is under suspicion, and turns out that her friend may not be exactly human after all. Not only that, but her dangerous father is well on his way to tracking her and her family down.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern - A graduate student uncovers an ancient library using clues found in a mysterious book.

Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - lesbian necromancers in space lesbian necromancers in space

life update

Getting a lil sick, but otherwise I'm doing fine. Trying to clean my room a lil bit at a time, and I'm helping out around the house more than when I was down in the dumps. I'm hoping to get my room clean by tomorrow.

books

First two books I’ve read this year were Chameleon Moon by RoAnna Sylver and Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey.

Chameleon Moon by RoAnna Sylver was a bit of a complicated read. The characters in it were top-notch and I really enjoyed their interactions, especially between the canon poly f/f/f relationship. Despite being a dystopian apocalyptic setting, there was a major message of hope. However, there was so much stuff going on at times that I found myself having to take breaks which decreased my enjoyment of the book. I am, however, looking forward to the next in the series. ⭐⭐⭐/5

Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have read Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey if I didn’t go in with a major misunderstanding. I assumed the magic school setting would be more than what it was and I ended up very disappointed at the realism found in this book. I did enjoy the depiction of healing spells, though. Regarding the characters, the protagonist was boring but everyone around her was pretty interesting. I especially liked Alexandria as a character. The ending gave me mixed feelings, so I have to take a star off. ⭐⭐ /5

I WOULD RECOMMEND THESE BOOKS TO…

Chameleon Moon - People interested in a dystopian setting, LGBTQ representation, healthy poly relationships, and/or the found family trope.

Magic For Liars - People who like mystery, side character lesbian representation, fluffy male love interests, and teenage magical shenanigans in the form of dick jokes.

Calorie tracking is hard...its easy in the beginning, but its so easy to just. forget about it, y'know? Because you gotta have your phone all you at all times. I DON'T HAVE POCKETS, lmao.

I got a PS4 yesterday!!! so I've been trying out games on there using PSNow.
Trails of Cold Steel has a very, very slow battle system, but the characters are all fun so I'm gonna stick with it. Reminds me of my first time playing Persona 3.
Pillars of Eternity was a game I tried out because it had the DLC, but I'm probably gonna stick to my PC version of it...controls are far easier on the PC.
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - The character creation screen was very ugly. I'll try it again tomorrow when my sense of aesthetics isn't so high from ToCS and Atelier.
Atelier Escha&Logy - Escha and Logy are cute!!!

~~~~~~~~Books~~~~~~

So I got back into reading books the other day because one of my goals for 2020 is to clear out my backlogs and re-embrace the world of fiction. I chose what looked like an ordinary horror story anthology----it's called Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files.

I was horribly wrong about it being an ordinary horror story. Turns out its part of the dark fiction genre, and it is daaaark. It simultaneously shocked me that they got away with publishing it, and made me want to read more by Gemma

If I had to recommend it to anyone......probably the type of people who think "Nah, nothing grosses me out anymore."

~~~Video Games~~~

Started playing Tyranny by the company Obsidian. I got it in an RPG humblebundle and it's actually a pretty good game! Basically, you're an underling to an evil galactic overlord, sent to send an edict to the quarreling leaders at the final area to be conquered . Lots of death, lots of info dumping because that's the type of setting that needs some explaining, and I still have no idea what is going on. But I'm liking the companions, and its not too long of a game so I think it's worth finishing.

Also, Sims 4 has too much CC. Send help.

TV Shows

The latest Masked Singer kinda peeved me off this week because Ken Jeong would not stop this reoccurring joke that got old.
I also tried Limetown again and I'm now on episode 2. It was a good episode and I'm interested in seeing what comes next, since I never really got past that section in the podcast.

Hey-o, so I haven't been very active at all on this site but I think I'm going to be using it far more regularly from now on. Some health stuff happened, and now I need a place to focus on self-improvement and fulfilling some goals.

Once I get back into reading books again I'll be posting some book reviews still, but this will probably become 80% self-improvement posts and 20% book reviews.

Examples of what I'll post:
- My weight loss journey (No pictures, tho.)
- Food recipes I want to try
- Posts about learning to crochet, improving my art
- Things like that

So basically it's now a life blog. Wooo.

I finished my first book of the month! I forgot to include it on my reading list, but I started this one yesterday and finished it today.

It's a medium-length novel, urban fantasy mystery novel. It is about a lesbian detective who happens to be a canidae, or, as we know them, werewolf. She uses her secret ability to transform into a wolf to work stakeouts without the suspect knowing, and one day a rich client comes along with 45 grand in hand to hire her to gain information on the client's daughter.

Honestly, this novel wasn't that bad. It was my first detective novel in.....possibly years? At all? I don't know??? And I thought it to be a pleasant ride. It was like what I expected a detective novels to be like: some action, some mystery, and a little bit of romance/sex.

( mild spoilers under cut. )

I did notice a few typos / errors, but I think that might have been because it was a review copy and I imagine the official release is better.

CAUTION!

Discussions of child abuse can be found in this story. This book is rated 18+ due to a few sex scenes, however the explicit sex scenes are consensual.

September Book Releases

September 3rd -

The Mythic Dream (edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe) - An anthology that retells classic mythological stories.
Loki: Where Mischief Lies (by Mackenzie Lee) - Set in the marvel universe. Loki travels to nineteenth century Earth to investigate a string of murders that are associated with Asgardian Magic. Also, GENDERFLUID PANSEXUAL LOKI.

September 10th -

Attack of the Fifty Foot Wallflower (by Christian McKay Heidicker) - In which the protagonist is a magnet for monsters, from flesh-eating plants to radioactive ants. Her mother goes missing, and she has to fend for herself.
Gideon the Ninth (by Tamsyn Muir) - “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” —Charles Stross
His Hideous Heart (edited by Dahlia Adler) - An anthology that retell Edgar Allen Poe's stories.

September 24th -

Wayward Son (by Rainbow Rowell) - A sequel to Carry On. Simon and Baz go on a road trip.